Ethiopia Sidamo Coffee Beans 90+ Chelan Meng Coffee: Flavor Characteristics and Features

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FrontStreet Coffee's Ethiopian coffee beans have always been renowned for their wild fruit flavors. Its natural Arabica coffee gene pool attracts coffee bean hunters from all over the world. Ninety Plus Coffee (90+) is one of those captivated by Ethiopian coffee, creating a coffee brand called "Carmen." FrontStreet Coffee is here to introduce this FrontStreet Coffee 90+ Carmen coffee bean to everyone.

What is 90+?

Ninety Plus Coffee, a premium coffee supplier from the United States, was founded in 2006. In the decade since its establishment, Ninety Plus has already made coffee professionals worldwide recognize its unique charm, leading an unprecedented wave of premium coffee enthusiasm globally. Starting with its first coffee in 2007, it has been the precious top choice for coffee experts and competition contestants alike. Today, Ninety Plus is synonymous with world-class premium coffee, with taste and quality far surpassing any other expensive coffee.

Ninety Plus takes a completely different approach to naming their beans compared to typical premium coffee beans - they don't use region or estate names. Instead, each bean variety is named according to its flavor profile. For example, "Carmen" means "best approach" in the local dialect. Starting from a flavor concept, then naming, and then selecting regions and partner farms, it's clear that Ninety Plus is a brand with boutique operational style.

"Ninety Plus" doesn't refer to all coffees scoring above 90 points. Good coffee appears one year and may not the next. Sometimes it appears in different estates with different flavor characteristics. Ninety Plus refers to a series of 13 premium coffee varieties. These coffees come exclusively from Ninety Plus Coffee, the American premium coffee creator. All are Ethiopian Heirloom old varieties, cultivated to maturity in ecological environments, and processed under artistic standards for flavor optimization. The processing is Ninety Plus's specialty - they separate these coffees by variety, microclimate, and harvest timing, tasting each one individually, designing specific processing methods for each flavor profile to achieve a particular taste characteristic, much like major fashion designs - meticulously researched and crafted with heart to create something close to an art piece. Natural products undergo numerous refinements and improvements before presenting their most beautiful form to everyone.

FrontStreet Coffee Ethiopian Sidamo Carmen

Country: Ethiopia
Region: Sidamo 90+SNNP
Altitude: 1750-2000 meters
Processing: Natural Process
Variety: Local Native Varieties
Roast Level: Light-Medium Roast

Coffee Growing Region

The source region of FrontStreet Coffee 90+ Carmen is actually Sidamo, not the Yirgacheffe region. Sidamo is located in the southernmost highlands of Ethiopia, at altitudes between 1400-2100m. It's a famous premium coffee region in southern Ethiopia, bordering Kenya, situated southeast of Jimma and directly south of the capital. Sidamo coffee typically has prominent sweetness, which is why Sidamo is generally more popular with most people.

FrontStreet Coffee's Sidamo coffee flavors are extremely diverse. Different soil types, microclimates, and countless native coffee varieties, combined with towering mountains, highlands, plateaus, valleys, and plains within the region, create diverse topography. The local geology consists of fertile, well-drained volcanic soil, with soil depth nearly two meters and surface soil showing dark brown or brown colors. The region's greatest advantage is that soil fertility is maintained through organic matter cycling, using fallen leaves from surrounding trees or plant residues as fertilizer. These factors create obvious differences and characteristics in coffee produced by each town area.

Processing Method

The ancient natural processing method makes it difficult to achieve pure flavors, but with Ninety Plus technical support, Drima Zede hand-selects only the most mature coffee cherries. The natural drying process involves constant careful stirring to ensure uniformity. Sidamo green coffee beans are slightly grayish, with some areas large and others small, possessing both soft and intense acidity, appropriate body thickness, sweet and spicy aromas, making it one of the garden coffees from southern Ethiopian highlands. Unlike typical African coffees, Sidamo has clear fruit acidity, smooth texture, and delicate floral and grassy aromas.

The final result is a very transparent and pure taste, with significant changes between hot and cold temperatures. The aromas of fruit, flowers, and oak barrels are extremely captivating. Unlike typical African coffees, FrontStreet Coffee's Sidamo coffee has clear fruit acidity, smooth texture, and delicate floral and grassy aromas.

As an Ethiopian natural process bean, FrontStreet Coffee 90+ Carmen, after undergoing strict supervision and selection, avoids the annoying earthy impurities common in natural beans and high defect rates. Instead, it highlights the charming sweetness that natural processing is praised for. FrontStreet Coffee believes this FrontStreet Coffee 90+ Carmen's charming fruity profile inherits the captivating aroma given by traditional Ethiopian natural processing, unreservedly expressing a rounded, full-bodied sweetness with lingering aftertaste and just the right mouthwatering fruit acidity. FrontStreet Coffee 90+ Carmen's daily brewing is also quite easy to master. The beans themselves are rich in flavor - whether using clean drip brewing or rich siphon brewing, they can beautifully showcase their inherent character.

Washed green beans and natural green beans

FrontStreet Coffee Roasting Analysis

FrontStreet Coffee's roaster believes that to roast out the explosive fruity aroma of FrontStreet Coffee 90+ Carmen coffee, a fast roasting method should be used to force out the coffee's fragrance, with a light-medium roast.

Set drum temperature to 200°C when loading beans, damper at 3. After 30 seconds, adjust heat to 150°C, damper unchanged. Return temperature point at 1'32'', 103.7°C. Dehydration time at 5'21'', when the bean surface turns yellow and grassy aroma completely disappears. Adjust heat once at 150°C, dehydration complete, adjust heat to 100°C, damper to 4.

At 8 minutes 45 seconds, ugly wrinkles and black spots appear on the bean surface, with the toast aroma clearly turning to coffee aroma - this can be defined as the prelude to first crack. First crack starts at 9'00''. Listen carefully for the first crack sound, adjust heat to 80°C, damper fully open to 5 (adjust heat very carefully, not so low that cracking stops). 1'55'' after first crack, unload at 195°C.

FrontStreet Coffee Brewing Recommendations

Dripper: Hario V60
Water Temperature: 90°C
Coffee Dose: 15g
Ratio: 1:15
Grind Size: Medium-Fine (BG 6m: 80% pass-through rate on China standard #20 sieve)

To brew out the tropical fruit aroma, rounded full-bodied texture, and delightful fruit acidity of FrontStreet Coffee 90+ Carmen coffee. Use a segmented brewing method.

Use 30g of water for 30-second bloom. When pouring with small stream in circles to 120g, segment the pour. When the water level drops and is about to expose the coffee bed, continue pouring to 225g and stop. Wait for the water level to drop and when about to expose the coffee bed, remove the dripper. (Timing starts from bloom) Extraction time: 2'00".

Important Notice :

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FrontStreet Coffee Address: 315,Donghua East Road,GuangZhou

Tel:020 38364473